


My Yesterdays Are Dead and Gone

by WishMoon (A_Wish_On_the_Moon)



Series: SofA Lite Exchange 2020 Gifts [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Handfasting, It Just Got Lost, Listen There Was a Plot Somewhere, Neji Gets It, Post-Canon, Promises, Romantic Ace Relationships, Sorry This Wasn't the Future You Were Looking For, Technically This is a Happy Ending, Tenten's Ace, Weapons and Symbolism, angst? what angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28078428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Wish_On_the_Moon/pseuds/WishMoon
Summary: Or: Tenten lives her life to the beat of her own rhythm, and remembers a boy, and a dream, and a promise. It does no good to chase after ghosts, but she is content to welcome them in, all the same. After all, even ghosts were familiar to her, once upon a time, weren’t they… ne, Neji?
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Series: SofA Lite Exchange 2020 Gifts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085768
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12
Collections: SofA Lite





	My Yesterdays Are Dead and Gone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FanGirlofManyThings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanGirlofManyThings/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [FanGirlofManyThings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanGirlofManyThings/pseuds/FanGirlofManyThings) in the [sofa2020lite](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/sofa2020lite) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> I'm here for anything soft, hurt/comfort is great but only if it's heavy on the comfort. 
> 
> DNW: NSFW of any kind, unhappy ending

⭑⁕⭑

Her name is Tenten. It is a plain name, a boring name, one without family or title or clan. It holds no status, holds no nationality. Reads, perhaps, like a broken toy record in the hands of a child. But it is a name, all the same. 

More importantly, however, it is  _ her _ name, and, with it, she can choose to be whomever and  _ whatever  _ she wants to be, without the heavy weight of expectations that burden so many of her classmates.

⭑⁕⭑

(It is a name only  _ she  _ can ride the winds of her dream upon, and it is a name she embraces with open arms.)

⭑⁕⭑

Tenten is born nameless, faceless, but for her ambitions — far greater than her form could ever contain. She builds a legacy from her own sweat and soul, as ink stains scrolls, stains fingertips, all whilst reaching for her heroes and chasing after her dreams. To be admired, to be revered... she is not the kind of woman to forget the roots she comes from, nor the horizons she is meant to break.

“I’m Tenten,” she laughs, when her team is formed. Tenten, without a clan. Tenten, without roots. Tenten, who is not without jutsu, like Hardworking Lee, nor with kekkai genkai, like Genius Neji. Quickly, she learns she does not have the sheer stamina of Gai-sensei, for all that she is a part of the team, nor the goals of her teammates, who face their own issues.

What connects them, she finds, is the sheer drive to succeed. To be prepared, to go above and beyond. They are shinobi, and shinobi are never lacking of ambition. And, it is here Tenten finds her place, between talent and training, between two opposite sides of the blade.

⭑⁕⭑

_ What I want _ , she thinks, as she spends sleepless days and sleepless nights training hard and training long,  _ Is to be known _ .

⭑⁕⭑

What Tenten admires most is not looks, nor skill, but the power to save, and the power to protect. Lady Tsunade, Tenten learns, is a woman who reshaped the  _ world _ with her fists, and forged the way for a team’s survival. She is a master of medicine, a master of her body and her techniques, and she is exactly the kind of person Tenten wishes she could be.

Tenten does not want for status or for wealth; those things do not matter to her. She does not want for power for power’s sake, nor companionship beyond the scope of this pocket of space, where her team becomes a team, becomes a bond, becomes fate. An endless circle, an endless cycle, but, in her dreams, she breathes in the sturdy tension of a cohesive whole, and is at peace. 

She is faceless, she is nameless, but she hates the idea that she could ever  _ be _ useless. 

(Tenten wants prove her worth and become the  _ greatest  _ weapons master of all time. She wants to learn the tools of the shinobi inside and out. She wants to fight, she wants to save. To be brave, to be certain. To be...  _ herself _ .)

((And, so, to this end, she becomes independent, becomes unique, and — free.)) 

And, so, she trains. Day in, day out, with bruises on her fingers and bitemarks on her tongue. She trains, and she practices, and she learns. 

And, ultimately, she becomes. 

Her peers begin to dally and falter, but all she does is smile and laugh, ready and willing to join the boys in their spars and their games. 

(Her spirit runs.) 

And when they think of little but love, and romance, and children? All she can think about is the corded muscles building their way into her slim shoulders, those hellish knots making their way into that boy without the ninjutsu, that brutal, pinpoint accuracy in the Hyuuga genius’s fingers. 

⭑⁕⭑

(This team, she knows, will be built of their own merit. Tenten can work with that, easy.)

⭑⁕⭑

“I don’t fall in love,” Tenten explains softly on a soft autumn afternoon, where the skies burn and Konoha’s shadowed forests start to fall. Neji brings up the topic of clan, she brings up the idea of weapons, and, somehow, the topic took a turn into clan politics and arranged marriages (well, more romance and passion, because of Lee), but Tenten hadn’t felt comfortable admitting something like this to (her) family.

With Neji, though, it’s different. Different, in a way she can’t explain, because she thinks he might understand, at least a little. Her fingers trace the fuzzy underside of a growth of dried-up dandelions when she speaks, as her eyes lock on something far away. The sounds of Lee kicking high in the air as he pulls his fists back, moving through forms on muscle memory, online, are distant to her ears.

Hyuuga Neji glances at her from the corner of his eye, but then looks back to watch Lee, who had accidentally knocked a baby bird from its perch and was desperately trying to apologize to its mother and carry it back to its nest. He pauses, and Tenten curls her knees closer, arms wrapping a little tighter around her legs.

“Do you want to?” he asks, when the silence begins to grow awkward.

Does she? Tenten has never felt the need, nor the desire, to. The desire to see her goals become a reality has always been enough.

“Not really,” she smiles, sadly, turning to face him. Neji looks unsure of what to say, and she can’t help the small giggle that escapes her. Even when it’s her who made him uncomfortable, he is still trying to protect her from her own pain.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she adds, bringing up a hand to rest on his shoulder. “I just wanted to tell someone.”

He sighs. “If it isn’t something that you want, then there’s no need to change yourself.”

Tenten blinks, flustered. “Oh?”

“You are our teammate,” he insists, bringing up a hand to settle over hers. “Sorry, but nothing has changed.”

He smirks, and Tenten looks away, smile wider on her placid face. 

⭑⁕⭑

(For someone so obsessed with fate and clan, Neji really is… so incredibly kind.)

((His grip, Tenten thinks, is warm.))

⭑⁕⭑

_ Clang!  _

It’s with a breath of dust that she flinches back, as if stunned. The acrid taste of metal digs into her side with a fervor that is both clean and frigid, the drip-drip-dripping of iron-threaded blood that proves she’s made another misstep. Another scar, another failure.

Huh. She tests the weight of the chain in her hand, then pulls her arm back to grab at the blade on the end. Maybe she whetted it too light?

Well, it is only to be expected. It’s been quite some time since she’s made her own tools to sell. That blacksmith from Rice Country had really spoiled her, she ponders, a bit bitterly. She hasn’t used her scrolls in years, and the title of ‘Weapons Mistress’ may very well already belong to another. 

A sad fact of growing up and growing old, she decides. Groaning, she stops the stress test long enough to clean the wound. As red seeps into the pads of her fingers and stains wood and tatami and steel, she wraps gauze and bandages around her waist, and ignores the chill that seeps into the training room. 

(The phantom touch of fingers guiding her hands are not real, no matter how much she wishes they were.)

She breathes out a sigh of lost chances and regrets, before standing up in a single, fluid motion. Her hands wrap the chain and pack it away into the pouch at her hip, before she walks up to the windows to let the air in. 

She’ll need to melt the metal, again, she knows, and reforge the kunai at the end. The chain is salvageable, but as a tool? She’s certain some poor shinobi will lose their life in the field, trying to fumble their way through an incomplete weapon. 

⭑⁕⭑

Tenten is touched by weapons that thirst for blood, for all that they were made to protect. To pierce, to encumber, to overwhelm. These weapons are weapons that were made to rend flesh from others, in the name of wars fought for peace, but she cares not about those things. 

To be useful is to ignore the unnecessary feelings that thrive within the tools one wields. To be useful is to pretend the dreams and emotions of the deceased do not leave you wondering, what kind of life did they live?

To be useful is to ignore the things you do not understand, and to learn that which you do until knowledge becomes power becomes safety, as phantom caresses dance over your callused palms and remind you that to be shinobi is to be unknown.

Tenten wants to be strong, for the sake of herself, for the sake of others. Her team, her goals — her wish to surpass the civilian roles that others wish for her to play by, for  _ kunoichi _ in times of peace are not known by their successes so much as they are by their failure to follow.

But, Tenten thinks, rueful, she is only a follower to those she trusts, and never one to tread the beaten path. To be noticed, to be accepted, she must rise above her betters. Rise, high enough that she cannot be forgotten.

(This, Tenten thinks, is my secret hope.) 

⭑⁕⭑

(The weapons in her hands tell a different story, if they could tell stories at all.)

((Foolish girl, she reminds herself. Shinobi are not seen, nor are they heard. So why wish for something more?))

⭑⁕⭑

One day, Tenten will become the master of weaponry, quick and deadly and spoken of through her tools. One day, she will be known for what she can accomplish, rather than what she cannot. Legends are made through seasons spent helping, spent hurting, until one’s name becomes both a curse and a blessing, at once.

One day, Tenten thinks. But, for now, she remains sheltered far more than the rest of her peers. She paints the seals of space and time into her scrolls, numerous books on fuuinjutsu scattered across her room, and begins to place shuriken and kunai and naginata into the pocket dimensions she cannot see. Seals her chakra through bloody fingertips into rice paper, one by one by one. 

Tenten, who prefers the cool, smooth feel of weapons and their uses for reasons she cannot explain, is not as studious as Sakura, who sinks her teeth into books with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. She is not like Shikamaru, whose head is filled with battle tactics but who prefers to laze around. She is not like Neji, or Sasuke, who are born geniuses that thrive on the practical application of what they’ve learned.

But, in this regard, tools and seals and scrolls, and the kind of taijutsu style that thrives on using anything and everything she has at her disposal — weapons released by blood, by chakra, by the kind of spirit in he soul that cannot be named — she is willing to work towards perfection.

⭑⁕⭑

( _ I want to be remembered _ , she tells herself.  _ I want to be known _ .)

((But, really, all she wants is to be useful.))

⭑⁕⭑

Tenten does not want for much, for all that she wants. But, sometimes, she thinks she wouldn’t mind: It’d be nice, if these soft, harsh days of battles and missions and meals together could last, forever.

These days of flowery proclamations of the beauty of youth, and the ridiculous, endless training regimes. These days of summer cicadas and sunshine, dusty roads and peaceful smiles. These days of missions and missions and missions, and the dance of blade against blade against wills. 

Of light spars and true battles, and the feeling that there is more this world has to offer, more bubbling beneath the surface, than sake-soaked curry and the life of a blacksmith that she might have been interested in chasing, once upon a time.

Though she is ambitious, Tenten is almost content with the way things are, and the way things turn out. Nowhere is perfect but, here, with Lee and Neji and Gai-sensei, and the whole of Konoha helping her grow, she’s found a place to put down her roots.

It should be enough, she thinks. Maybe, it is.

⭑⁕⭑

(What she remembers: a boy, and a dream, and a wish. Vows exchanged atop cloth tied tightly around wrists, in place of promises, in place of rings.)

((A place to belong, and a place to return to.))

⭑⁕⭑

And, when everyone leaves her behind for marriage and the wedded life, she steps back, because that isn’t what she wants. She doesn’t need another leg to stand on, doesn’t need family and love and romance. 

(Doesn’t need a prison, when her weapons thirst for tomorrow, and the beckoning taste of a world still at war calls for her blood, and sweat, and tears.)

She doesn’t care for any of that, she knows. Does not feel anything beyond the bonds she has made, and softened into her own time trapped in the space of contentment. Her team accepts it, for all that they are not the same. Tenten wonders, sometimes, and can’t help the grateful feeling that warms her to the bone.

Neji, though, dead and buried over a decade back... he understood better than most. 

(She thinks she wouldn’t have minded, being tied to him. The pact they’d made, — the promise he would have kept, had she asked — she still has the soft-spoken words inked into the shell of her ear, into the soft webbing of his hands.) 

But it’s too little, too late, and she’s gotten old and complacent in these times of peace. Her little shop of weapons and tools and scrolls lays open for anyone who is willing to come pay it a visit, and she sits at the toll booth, tired and bored and just a little bit sad. 

She’s free, and she enjoys that, but she can’t help but think that she’s lost those bonds she’d cherished so much because of it. Because she may have been strong, but never enough, and she may have been free, but she was still tied to these chains. 

(She hadn’t had the strength, she apologizes, to let the bird out of its cage.)

And, for who is left behind, she can smile and “blossom”, as her sensei may say, but she cannot be the lotus flower that spreads its roots and propagates, and she cannot be the little girl that wanted nothing more than to prove herself. Those things are childhood dreams, and childhood dreams are just forgotten promises to herself that she had tried and failed to keep.

It’s interesting, this betrayal of her ambitions for the sake of one man, but, then again, a lot of them had given up, hadn’t they? Even when she cries, she smiles, and her remaining teammate knows better than to pry. 

(After all, it was not their mentor that fell.)

She bites her lip at the irony. The most careful of them all was the most reckless, wasn’t he? 

And, though she may smith the kunai and swords that these little shinobi buy, though she may craft and create the tools used for the murder she always claims to abhor, she does not battle as she used to. Her mistake, her fault, but that is what happens when people play with honey and steel, and forget that the use of a weapon is not set by how effective it is in combat, but by how it can aid the goals of its master. 

The people she knows, and the people she does not. The goals she had, and the things she lost, along the way. She had hoped to protect and, in the end, she couldn’t even protect Neji, when it mattered most, could she?

So she bends down to pick up the messy little fragments of old childhood dreams, seals them once more with the ink that drips from her taste buds and splatters the saliva-and-ash of her paper birds, and furls the roll with a flick of her wrist, long practice making the task as easy as breathing. 

What she wouldn’t give to trap those days in time, and seal them like she can her blades. What she wouldn’t give, to go back to when things were easier, and she still had something to strive towards.

⭑⁕⭑

(In the end, there’s nothing left to prove to anyone but her and her alone, and she finds herself wanting, finds herself lacking.)

(( In what, however, it is, perhaps, better that she does not know.))

⭑⁕⭑

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the delay! Hope you like it.


End file.
